Fire-Wise Landscaping: How Safe Is Your Home?

Here is some information that might help make unnecessary your home from a fervour . If you live in a gamy - flak area , you should already screw this stuff and be putting the principles into practice .

Wildfires can happen anywhere

Perhaps you are think , “ Wildfires only go on out west . I ’ll just worry about floods and tornado and blizzards and hailstorms and plagues of flying garden gnome . ”

Ponder this : The last meter I check off , Myrtle Beach , South Carolina , was on the Atlantic glide . We call that “ back eastward . ” The firing that broke out there on April 24 , 2009 , burned 19,600 acres and consumed 80 homes . So heed up , please . To paraphrase Bob Dylan , the mood , it is a changin ’ .

At times , the flaming would calm down , but the smoldering retain , quick for the next 70 mph gust to rekindle the blaze .

When the smoke comes , liveliness becomes a sci - fi movie . Vocabulary words include “ apocalypse , ” “ Armageddon , ” and “ OMG!”Photo : Billy Goodnick .

I was at a presentation by Santa Barbara ’s withdraw fire gaffer , Ron Prince , a few week ago regarding the withering Tea fire we experienced in November 2008 . Ron and his stave were describing how at the peak of the firestorm , “ strike team ” cruise into actively burning neighborhood and decided where to take a stand . If the landscape gardening around a house endanger the social movement of the fire-eater and equipment , or lend to the fuel load around the structure , these guy rope hit the accelerator on their 38,000 - lb . rigs and went front for better odds . I ca n’t say I blame them .

Creating a fire-wise landscape

The key to creating a fire - wise landscape around your home is to render “ defensible space . ” In other Word , you increase the odds of surviving a wildfire by managing the fuel around your dimension . There are no “ fireproof ” plant . OK , if you need to quibble , the kelp that mature off the shoring of Santa Barbara beaches has never burned in a brushfire . I ’m no expert , but I think it might have to do with being surround by brine . But I digress .

How to firescape

Your object is to minimize the amount of fuel that flame can feed off of . Aside from the obvious steps — cutting back tree branches that beetle your roof , eradicate inflammable building material like wood decking , and authorize dry weed and supergrass — there is a systematic zona approach that makes a spate of sense .

depict a bull’s - eye with roughly rotary zones give forth outwards from your home .

zona 4is the outermost dowry of your property . For homes right on the “ fringe of civilization , ” this is telephone the wildland / urban interface , where native vegetation come correctly up to your place business . In Santa Barbara , these industrial plant are usually part of the chaparral ecology — plants designed by nature to cut . It ’s part of the renewal procedure .

Visualize islands of vegetation separate by areas of scummy - fuel plants or at least 20 pes of mulch . This organization breaks up the fuel that could help as a fuse conduct to your family . The technical term for it is “ discontinuous fuel source . ”

geographical zone 3 , snug to the house , consists of low - growing , OK - leafed plants that burn quickly and bring about little flaming lengths . This way , the fervidness deplete the fuel in a flash and the spread of the flames is dilute . A in force palette might be gazania daisy , Lavandula‘Provence’,Geranium incanum , andLantana montevidensis . There are certain to be like plant in your gardening zona .

Zone 2is juicy . No , not the wearable stain grace the tail end of lucullan sweat pants . I ’m talking about plants that store a lot of moisture in their tissue . This should include very low - grow plant that are harder to incinerate . In SoCal , we have a diverse pallette to choose from : Agave , Aloe , Crassula , andAgapanthusare a few of the soft - tissue sort , complemented by low growers likeNepeta faassenii , our nativeHeuchera maxima , andErigeron karvinskianus .

Zone 1is where you make your last stand . Give up the picturesque , onetime - schoolhouse idea of foundation plantings . The last thing you desire to do is mound fuel against the house ; you might as well put gasoline in your sprinkler scheme . The plant you choose can come in from the same palette as Zone 2 , but it ’s a good idea to admit some irrigated lawn and space with inert fabric like crushed rock mulch .

There are no warrant that heeding these guidelines will preserve your home if a wildfire is raging your way . you’re able to make the textbook - perfect flack - wise garden and still turn a loss everything . If you embrace and implement these idea you might have passing fervidness crew take care up your private road and think , “ It look like they did it mighty . Let ’s make a stand . ”

Informative LinksFederal Alliance for Safe Homes – Disaster preparedness nonprofit

Debra Lee Baldwin article – “ Did Succulents Save Her Home?”L.A. clock time

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Firewise Gardening in Southern California

Firescaping in Northern California

Firewise Landscaping in the Mountain West

Firewise Landscaping in the Northwest

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The planting at the entrance of Santa Barbara’s Firescape Demonstration Garden is intended to catch peoples' eye. Sedum rubrotinctum is a colorful ground cover, while a spikey Phormium ‘Jack Spratt’ (front left) and Protoasparagus ‘Myers’ (back) add a vertical accent. Behind the sign, big brother Phormium ‘Dark Delight’ reinforces the strong coppery foliage, while Euryops pectinatus viridis brings cheery yellow daisies to the composition.

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At times, the flames would calm down, but the smoldering continued, ready for the next 70 mph gust to rekindle the blaze.

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When the smoke comes, life becomes a sci-fi movie. Vocabulary words include “apocalypse,” “Armageddon,” and “OMG!”Photo: Billy Goodnick.

The planting at the entrance of Santa Barbara’s Firescape Demonstration Garden.Photo: Billy Goodnick

A display garden adjacent to a fire station in northern San Diego County illustrates how a garden can be fire-wise, water-wise, and lush and lovely too.Photo: Debra Lee Baldwin, from her bookDesigning with Succulents